Linda Ikeji: How an African Female Blogger Made Over $1,000,000 with her Blog

Linda Ikeji: How an African Female Blogger Made Over $1 million with her Blog.

Linda Ifeoma Ikeji is a Nigerian Entrepreneur, writer, and blogger. She attended The University of  Lagos in 2004 and was nominated for the MTV Africa Music Award for Personality of the Year in 2016. She also ranks #17 as part of the most powerful women in journalists by WijAfrica.

Linda was born on September 19, 1980, in Lagos State in the southwestern part of Nigeria. She took on a parttime job as a waiter at the age of 18years whiles schooling, in hopes of assisting her family and supporting herself through school.

“When I left University in 2004, I started my own modeling agency, and then I started doing events. I was a big hustler, really big hustler.” – Linda Ikeji

When she was 19 – 20years, She recalls going to a top television station in Nigeria, in hopes of becoming a tv presenter, content producer, or anything media related.

“I knew that I was very creative, I knew I had it in me but I wanted that platform and I was in school so they didn’t really take me seriously, I never got the job, so I moved on. I was a model, I had my own modeling agency so I just focused on modeling and fashion.” – Linda Ikeji

How Linda Ikeji Started Blogging

After graduating from the University of Lagos, Linda Ikeji started out as a struggling entrepreneur trying out various businesses. In the year 2006, She started her own blog lindaikejisblog.com which is now one of Africa’s biggest blogging sites. The blog focuses on Gossip, News, Events, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Fashion, and Beauty.

At the 2019 Ghana Bloggers Summit, She talked about how she had no idea what a blog was before she became a blogger. She also mentioned that she was sent a link by a friend of a story written about her on a top blog in Nigeria called bellanaija.com and that’s how she knew blogging was a “thing”.

“When I read the story published about me on BellaNaija.com, I read the comments, It had about 30 comments and they were talking about me. I just enjoyed the whole thing, I was happy so I started visiting her blog more often but she wasn’t like a gossip blogger. She was a lifestyle, wedding kind of Blogger, She wasn’t into controversies at all.” – Linda Ikeji

As she continued to visit BellaNaija, She happened to discover Perezhilton.com and fell in love with his blog and style of blogging. “Anytime I visited any of these two blogs, I wish I was the owner until one day I said to myself, Why can’t I open my own too? like what’s the big deal?”.

After realizing writing content about people was a “thing”,  She started her blog lindaikejisblog.com using Google’s free to use blogging platform blogger.com with intentions to blog about herself and to document her daily life to her readers. She began blogging as a hobby and intended to grow her blog through Blog Commenting (This is the act of commenting under other top blogs in exchange to drive traffic to your blog or website).

Read also: How To Create a Blog For Free

How Linda Ikeji’s Blog Became Popular

In 2007, almost a year after she started blogging, There was a controversy about a famous person in Nigeria and all the top news websites published it. “I remember my sister and I were talking about it and I decided to publish it on my blog. Before that, I had never written about anyone, It was always about me”.

Little did she know, that was going to be the breakthrough of her blogging carrier. “I mostly used to get  5-10 comments under each post I published about myself, after publishing this story, I got over 20 comments for a single post and my blog visitors, for the first time were even communicating with each other in the comment section”.

After realizing how far the post went, She decided to post more content and news about people in Nigeria instead of writing about herself. She began posting celebrity gist daily and Nigerians in diaspora went crazy for her blog. “They wanted to know what was going on home back home, and my blog became their primary go-to site for Nigerian gist”.

How Linda Ikeji Makes Money From Her Blog – Over $1 million Blogging

After Blogging passionately for 4-years(by 2010), Linda’s blog went from receiving 3000 views to over 100,000. She one day received a call from a company offering to pay her to promote their content, even though she refused to take the payment, she ended up walking away with not less than ₦100,000($260).

The second advertiser she worked with paid ₦60,000 for a year. After a couple of months, she posted her fixed advertisement rates and her blog has since been making her money month after month.

Apart from monetizing her blog with Google Adsense Advertisements, Linda landed herself multiple advertisement deals and partnerships making her one of the richest bloggers in Africa. Her blog now charges anywhere from ₦1,200,0009($2600) for a single ad banner on her site.

Her Advice To New Bloggers

“If you want to start your own blog, always remember the first thing you need is passion because Blogging takes time. I blogged for 4 years before making any profit. As successful and busy as I am, I still blog because I’m passionate about it”.